


Forelsket

by boxparade



Series: All Our Yesterdays: The Codas [1]
Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: F/M, Family, Growing Up, Homophobia, Kid Fic, Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, POV First Person, POV Minor Character, Religion, Slice of Life, The Meaning of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 05:46:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My father—one of them, anyway—didn’t really talk about his family much. It wasn’t a complete non-subject, because it would come up sometimes and in later years, my brother and I would ask, but whenever it came up, the most my father had to say on the subject was “They’re my family, not yours, M&M.”</p><p>(A scene from after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/335810">All Our Yesterdays</a>, in which Emily, twenty-two years later, has a few things to say about family, and love.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forelsket

**Author's Note:**

> Forelsket (Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.
> 
> Part of the "All Our Yesterdays" 'verse.

My father—one of them, anyway—didn’t really talk about his family much. It wasn’t a complete non-subject, because it would come up sometimes and in later years, my brother and I would ask, but whenever it came up, the most my father had to say on the subject was “They’re my family, not yours, M&M.”

This, of course, only negated my questions for so long, and I’ve been told I was a very precocious child when it came to the subject, but eventually I had to reach the age where I stopped believing my parents’ words to be all-knowing and finite. The most I ever got either of them to say on the matter went something like _They don’t understand certain very important things about family, Em. You don’t need to worry about them._

But I—unlike my brother—tended to be rather curious about where I came from, and maybe it had something to do with my subconscious knowledge of my biological heritage. I vaguely recall a time in my life—perhaps about a year, when I was at the extraordinarily annoying age of nine or so—when I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that genetics were the only thing that mattered in family. The lines around my Dad’s eyes got deeper, and he spent a lot of that time frowning, concerned that this was more than just a phase. I snapped out of it the moment my parents finally caved and told me I hadn’t magically sprung into existence from the both of them, but that there was a woman somewhere that had housed me for nine months and then promptly disappeared into the great unknown.

This revelation, of course, only led to more questions. I was quite quick to accept that my previous assumptions about family were wrong, and I didn’t suddenly denounce my Dad simply because he wasn’t connected to me by blood. I imagine this was quite a relief to the both of them, though I don’t know why they didn’t just tell me sooner that I was causing one of my fathers quite a bit of strife with all my false opinions.

Anyway, perhaps it was the residual energy of this time in my life that led me to push for answers about the side of my family I’d never met. When I was younger I had next to no idea what kind of impossible circumstances would lead to an entire part of my family being cut off from me, like they didn’t exist (which I had recently learned was impossible after what I now think of as a precursor to the Sex Talk.) But as I became older, the reasons for all the secrecy and avoidance of my father’s family became quite a bit clearer.

Despite how determined my parents had been to shield me from the “alternate” perspectives of certain members of our society, middle school and then high school brought to light a lot of these points of view, and while I was quite firm in my conviction that they were all wrong, so very wrong, I managed to piece together that perhaps my father’s family didn’t agree so much. At least, by the time I got to my Freshman year, I’d learned enough about the Church of Latter Day Saints to figure out that they might not have been too sympathetic to my father and his “preferences” (as if we can honestly still say it’s a choice.)

It wasn’t until later, though—when I was going away to college for the first time, digging through old boxes in the attic looking for mementos and sentimental things I could take with me as comfort—that I found out about the whole story.

My parents were out for the day, some sort of yearly check up with my Dad’s PT guy (Pa was there for support, or something) and Jake was home for the last few weeks of summer but wasn’t around that day. Point being, I had the house to myself, and a lot of free time, and I still insist it wasn’t entirely my fault that I tripped over a box (it was laying in the middle of the floor) and everything spilled all over the place. Who isn’t going to look, given that kind of situation?

I’d seen enough of my parents when they were younger to get a vague idea of what they looked like—my friends would always whistle and say _damnnnnnnnnn_ in that really drawn-out way that made me uncomfortable—but I’d avoided pictures of them _together-_ together. Because accidentally walking in on your parents is scarring enough as it is, and besides, they had a tendency to hide all the pictures of their younger selves.

I think it’s because my Dad used to wear a lot of pink. And sparkles. And…unicorns? And Papa used to wear purple skinny-jeans. It was a little disturbing.

But these pictures—the ones spilled all over the floor, that is—were different. They weren’t the embarrassing ones Uncle Ryan always showed me, of my Dad before he was a Marine, back when they were trying to be a band. They seemed like personal pictures, most of them of my fathers together, though some with the four of them—Jon, Ryan, Dad and Pa—and they were sort of…warm.

I started gathering up the photos, because I’d made a mess up there, and I still hadn’t found what I was looking for (though by that point, I wasn’t sure what that was anymore.) And of course (because isn’t that just the way of things?) I got mildly distracted by the photos I was picking up.

Like I said, a lot of them were of my parents together, young and in love, that sort of thing. (It still terrifies me to think that my parents were only 17 when they met and started dating (in two weeks, _honestly)_ , and 20 when they got married (eloped)—two years older than I was then, and six years younger than I am now.) I had to skip over the artsy, sepia-toned ones, because Jon took those and I’m still certain there are pictures of my parents naked somewhere in that stack, and I really don’t need to see that.

Buried beneath some of them though were photos I’d never seen before, with people I’d only heard of in brief passing, and only seen pictures of on the rare occasion I could convince Pa to crack open the old photo albums. Most of them were the simple smile-for-the-camera, point-and-shoot kind—taken on vacations or at birthday parties and whatnot. My father was in some of the older ones, looking even younger than he did in the pictures of my parents together, and even when he looked no older than eight, he had that way about him that screamed _black sheep_ when he was standing next to all his brothers and sisters.

No one on that side of the family ever looked happy, really—or if they were, they were hiding it well behind robotic smiles and weird, stoic poses. At the time, I remember thinking I was glad I’d never met any of them—they didn’t seem like much fun, and I would’ve probably been scolded for dying a strand of my hair pink, even if it _was_ for cancer awareness.

But there were a few—maybe three in total—that had people from my Pa’s family and _both_ my parents pictured. In all of them, my parents looked _extremely_ uncomfortable, especially my Dad, but that was nothing next to the grandparents I’d never met. They looked torn—as I would’ve imagined, considering their religion is, quite frankly, ridiculous to me. My aunt—I think her name was (is?) Kara, but I can’t be sure—looked slightly less bothered by the idea. She at least seemed to acknowledge my Dad’s existence, even if she must’ve been reticent to accept him as a part of the family.

In the last one—it was also the latest one, chronologically—my Pa looked downright _miserable._ I remember tearing up at the look on his face, like he was grieving. (Maybe he was, I realize now.) But then again, I was exceptionally prone to bursts of emotion during those few months before college. We all were (everyone except Jake, anyway. He spent most of that summer drunk off his ass, being newly 21 and all.)

But underneath the ‘family photos’, when I finally pulled myself together and went to put them back, were another set of photos—much older, and worn, like they’d been dragged around a lot instead of safely tucked away in a box, unmoved since being printed.

It took me a damn long while to puzzle out who was in them—it was the same couple, over and over in different scenes, but they both looked happy, and young, and extremely in-love. I hadn’t figured it out until I had the idea to flip the photos over—people wrote things on the back of old photos a lot, as I recalled—and okay, wow, that couple? My grandparents. The ones I’d never met, on my Pa’s side, not Gram & Gramps.

And that was about the time, as I remember it, that I broke into a fit of hysterics (or some such ridiculous emotional outburst—as I said, it was a very turbulent time, and I think I was PMSing) because it was _ridiculous._ And stupid. So, so stupid. Because all I could see, in any of those couples photos—the ones of my parents, or the ones of my grandparents—was pure, unmitigated love.

My Dad looked at Pa the _exact_ same way my grandmother and grandfather looked at each other in those photos, _exactly,_ and I remember thinking bitterly that this was what religion did—tore people apart for no good reason. Made people miserable and hateful and _stupid_ because some damn book said so, because thousands of years ago a couple of guys felt the need to assert their masculinity (as is so very often the way of men) by making damn sure everyone knew they only ever wanted to fuck women. And that they never would’ve considered fucking each other, not in a hundred million years, because that was _wrong_ and look, it said so right here, in this book that God told me to write.

Fucking _ridiculous._

Of course, since then, my views on religion have changed toward a slightly less radical viewpoint (slightly, anyway) though I get the feeling that’s due to Mark’s influence more than anything. But at the time, I was eighteen, that tender age where everything is black and white and a big-fucking-deal, and I was about to go off to college and vastly expand my horizons (read: drink and party.)

But at the time, it’d seemed so damning: my grandparents loved each other (at least they had, at one time.) My parents love each other. Religion said—what? That it was impossible for my parents to be in love? That it was wrong? That it was some sort of attack against God and country that all they wanted was to get married, raise a family, grow old together? (Which I’m happy to say, they are now well on their way to. They think I don’t know about the two-week trip to the Bahamas they’re planning for their anniversary. Next they’ll be moving to Florida to play golf. Oh, the horror.)

But I was eighteen, and I didn’t understand how anyone could think that letting some invisible man and a book control your life was healthy. That disowning a seventeen-year-old because he liked boys was what God wanted you to do. That dismissing a love as burning and obvious as the sun in the sky was alright, or fair.

But enough about my indignation. I’ve long since accepted the fact that some people will never quite understand what love or family is, and that no matter how far we’ve progressed in the recent years, there are still parts of the world where letting women drive cars is illegal, forget letting two people of the same sex get married.

The point is, I was eighteen when I fully understood the extent of what went down between my father and his parents—though a lot of my understanding had much more to do with my tantrum than with seeing the photos. Because it was quite possible I was also fairly precocious as an adult, not just as a child. I’d meant to put all the photos back where I’d found them, leave the box for someone else to trip over in the years to come, but I’d been so overcome with fury and sadness that instead, I’d stomped downstairs, spread out the photos like some sort of mausoleum for the last remnants of faith I’d had in God or humanity, and essentially attacked my parents the moment they got home.

I’m still thankful that Jake was nowhere to be found that day—it had been bad enough dealing with the teasing when he’d heard the retelling, I can’t imagine he’d ever have stopped if he’d actually been there, because (as I remember) it was quite a bit worse than any words could’ve described.

On the positive end of things, my fathers had both looked at me with such fierce pride for the next few months that they almost forgave me for getting hit by a moped during my first week of classes. On the not-so-positive side, my Pa had been so completely torn between defending his parents’ beliefs and trusting his own that he’d managed to shout me down from my pillar of righteousness before losing all the fight in him, and my Dad had to take over while he slumped into a nearby chair and watched with weary eyes as his spawn tried to fight wars with ghosts.

My Dad had been a bit more reasonable—there was a lot of “Sometimes people feel like their faith is all they have” and “Your father and I agreed a long time ago that it was best to let things be”, to which I’d hotly responded that “faith is bullshit” and “so my grandparents were bigots _and_ cowards?” which, in turn, got me sent to my room.

It’s taken me about eight years to admit it, but my Dad may have been right to end it when he had, because I’d been so consumed with anger that if I’d been allowed to continue, I probably would’ve tracked my grandparents down myself and started throwing things at them and screaming. I definitely didn’t need a police record when I was hardly out of high school.

Still, Pa stopped by later, when I wasn’t quite so angry, and after reiterating a lot of the things my Dad had said in his attempt to be reasonable, he thanked me, gave me one of the photos of him and my Dad (my favorite), and made me feel like an adult and an equal for the first time in my life. In the end, it’d been worth it.

I don’t think about my grandparents very much, now—their pictures were shoved back with all the rest to gather dust in the attic, stony faces sentenced to years of staring out at darkness, a fitting fate for the images of people I always considered to be blind anyway.

I still have the photo of my parents. I got it framed after I got to college, walking seven blocks to the photography shop only to be caught in a freak August thunderstorm on the way back, and now it’s a bit wavy in the corner where the water got it. But the image itself is still distinguishable, and nearly every one of my friends has asked about it at some point or another, whether it’s to ask who the people in it are (“My parents,” I say proudly, “my family.”) or to ask what the _hell_ they’re wearing (“They wanted to be rockstars,” I’ll say with a waspish smile, “instead they opted for kids and the quiet life, though I can’t say I’m disappointed with how things turned out.”) or to ask what they’re doing (“Being in love,” I respond, because what else can I say?)

It’s one of those photos that’s rarely misunderstood: they’re in their own studio, back in the early days, and my Dad is behind his kit (we still have it; he let Jake bang around on it for a few years before I stole it right out from under him and refused to give it back) with his sticks in one hand and a smoothie in the other, from my Pa’s old work. He’s holding it back, away from Pa, who’s leaning over the kick drum with an arm outstretched toward it. It looks like everything is about one second from crashing and tumbling to the ground—there was no way my father was able to balance like that, no matter what he says—but despite the impending disaster (drums disassembled and likely broken, smoothie coating the both of them, sprawled all over the drums and the floor and each other, drum sticks flying off to hit Ryan in the back of the head) they seem unconcerned. Oddly so, because they’re both laughing open and bright, and you would swear, to the two of them, time didn’t exist: they’re simply going to stay there, staring into each others’ eyes and laughing, being young and kind of dumb and in love. Forever.

Mark asked me, once, why I like it so much. I couldn’t really answer him. I think it has something to do with it being one of those moments you can’t really define, where even a picture can’t quite do it justice. It’s something that really only my parents can understand, and I like having that. Having a part of them that’s just them, uncomplicated and unique.

Sometimes I wonder…if I tracked down my grandparents, showed them that picture, would they see? Because sometimes, I swear, all I can see when I look at that picture is love. I don’t know how anyone could _not_ see it, because it’s just there, right there. It’s almost tangible.

But some people can only see what they want to see. Which, when I think about it, is really quite sad. There’s all this beauty, all this love right there in front of them, and they’re blind to it. I can’t imagine what that’s like—I don’t think I want to know. It’s got to be awfully cold, and lonely. I pity those who live their lives like that. They’re missing so much. They’re missing the whole damn _point_ of living in the first place.

Though I suppose I’m a bit biased, at the moment, regarding the point of life being love and all that. It hasn’t even been a day since Mark proposed—I said yes, by the way. I haven’t told my parents yet, but, well, I can guess what their reactions are going to be. I love Mark—love him with my whole being, so much so that I wonder if people can see the same thing in us that I see in my parents—and I can’t imagine my world without him.

I wanted to ask Pa to walk me down the aisle, but apparently Dad has to do it—some sort of 20-year-old promise, or something, they like to debate it in their spare time. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, so long as they’re both there. And Mark, too. It’s kind of important that he be there, considering it’s his own wedding, and whatnot.

But still, feeling what I feel for Mark, and seeing what I see in my parents…I can’t think of anything better to be the meaning of life. Maybe it’s fucking sappy, and hell knows getting married is a great deal more cause for emotional outbursts than going off to college, but–

Well.

This is love. It’s love, and it’s happiness, and it’s family. And It’s all I really need.


End file.
